


Good for Morale

by commas_and_ampersands



Series: Minako in Thedas [2]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4379714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Minako seeks to make Cullen Rutherford's life hell for the good of the Inquisition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good for Morale

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an anonymous user on tumblr where they give me the first sentence, and I was supposed to write 5 more. To the surprise of exactly no one, this got a bit more than 5 sentences.

“Minako, no!”

“Minako, _yes_!”

Athehris paused before the Cullen’s door, her already good mood blossoming at the familiar sound of her commander’s argument with her… well, whatever Minako was to her. Or in general for that matter. 

It seemed to Athehris that every time she came across them, they were having a “discussion” that essentially boiled down to that exact exchange. Minako wanted something Cullen was desperate to prevent, and Minako was prepared to wear down the commander’s resolve by any means necessary. Given Minako’s prior experience (which Athehris still had trouble making sense of, let alone believing), surely she occasionally had useful, actionable ideas Cullen would have approved of. In fact, Athehris knew they existed; if one occurred to Minako, she would bring it to her, Leliana, or Josephine without delay. Occasionally she even had useful ideas for Bull’s Chargers or another Inquisition agent. But Cullen only ever heard about the truly ridiculous ones. These included everything from changing the Inquisition’s uniforms from olive green to bright orange to infiltrating the Magisterium armed only with a short skirt and a spoon.

She was still trying to figure out what Minako intended to do with the spoon.

Athehris tried and failed to school her face into something imperious and then stepped into Cullen’s office. Athehris took in the now familiar sight of Minako perched on the corner of his desk while the commander himself leaned against his bookcase as if it alone could grant him the sanity necessary to deal with her. Both of them perked up considerably when they saw Athehris. Minako saw her as a potentially ally for chaos, while Cullen hoped that she could bring order back into his life. Athehris always had great fun deciding which way she would lean.

“Inquisitor,” Cullen said, nodding his head in greeting. “I was just explaining to Min—“

“Athehris!” Minako threw herself from the desk and draped herself over Athehris’s shoulders, forcing the elf to bear the blonde’s full weight. “At long last, my dearest friend has come to save me from her cruel army captain.”

Athehris watched Cullen twitch at every perceivable slight: hanging on the Inquisitor, disparaging his character, and ignoring his rank. The commander knew perfectly well that Minako did it to annoy him. Knowing didn’t seem to help.

She patted Minako’s hair (impossibly long, impossibly thick, and impossibly there at all). “What horrible thing has the commander done to you this time, Mina?”

Cullen once again looked towards the bookcase for intercession. “Maker’s breath.”

Minako straightened, pointedly wiping away the single perfect tear she had conjured for the occasion. Once she was sure Cullen had noticed it, she said, “I simply dropped in—“

“—literally through my ceiling—“

“—to ask the commander a simple, trifling—“

“—needlessly complex and likely inappropriate—“

“—favor, and before I could even begin to ask—“

“—as if I need to hear it to know it’s a terrible idea; it’s your idea—“

“—he refused!”

Athehris’s eyes swam at the back-and-forth between them and hoped that she could adequately recreate it later. Then again, she suspected Minako planned to already, with embellishments. Perhaps she’d ask Athehris for help in a reenactment. Cullen didn’t know it yet, but Minako’s impression of him had caused Bull to snort and nearly choke on that awful Qunari liquor. He hadn’t been able to smell anything for days.

“So you don’t actually know what she wants?” Athehris clarified.

Cullen almost looked offended. “She wanted to assassinate the Archon with a spoon.”

“I never said that’s what the spoon was for.”

Cullen blanched, his mind grappling for another explanation. Athehris couldn’t be sure if his horror stemmed from some alternative he’d come up with or the fact that he couldn’t think of any at all.

Athehris gave him a pitying look. “Cullen, you have to at least hear the idea before you say no.”

Minako positively beamed with self-satisfaction. Cullen sank into his chair in defeat. He leaned his forehead against one hand and then gestured at Minako with the other. “As the Inquisitor commands.”

“You should get new armor.”

That gave both Athehris and Cullen pause. It sounded… reasonable.

It had to be a trap.

“Why?” Cullen asked, deeply suspicious.

“You’ve been wearing that since I met you. Since before I met you, apparently, and even if you don’t fight that much, you should still replace it on occasion, no?” Minako looked at him with such open distress so earnest Athehris felt nearly convinced. “I’d be just devastated if you were hurt, Cullen.”

Cullen shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I… thank you for your concern Minako. However, I assure you my armor is more than adequate, if largely ceremonial.”

“But we just received some new schematics that would be just perfect for you.”

There was a chance, however small, that Athehris would have been about to keep a straight face if she’d known about this ahead of time. Unlikely, but technically possible. But now that Athehris knew exactly what Minako was up to, she couldn’t help it. She laughed.

Cullen glowered in her direction. “What?”

“Nothing,” Athehris giggled.

“Inquisitor.”

“…yes?”

“Where did the armor come from?”

Inquisitor or no, Athehris had no intention of refusing the commander when he used that particular tone of voice. “Par Vollen.”

Athehris pinpointed the exact moment Cullen put it together. Easy enough to do when his ears turned bright red. He pushed himself back to his feet in an ultimately fruitless attempt to reclaim his dignity.

“Out.”

“What? It’s good armor,” Minako insisted, her own shoulders twitching with the effort not to laugh.

“It’s _indecent_ ,” he snapped. “And only useful for Qunari considering how much it leaves… exposed. Their skin is nearly as hard as gurn hide.”

“You were saying just the other day that we needed to improve morale,” Minako countered.

“What does that have to do with—“

“Cullen, I guarantee that you parading around half-naked would make this the happiest place in all of Thedas.”

“Get. Out.”

“I mean, my morale alone—“

“Out!”

“Oh, fine,” Minako sighed tragically. “I suppose I’ll tell Harritt to just make me a set then.”

She turned on her heel and flounced out of the room, blowing Athehris a kiss as she passed. Cullen stomped after her and slammed the door in her wake. He swore viciously under his breath and kept turning pinker, pointedly ignoring her until she stopped giggling. It took a while.

“She is going to drive me to an early grave, I swear,” Cullen growled. “Now then, was there something you—“ He stopped, his honey brown eyes wide with horror. “Did she say—“

Athehris snickered again. “I was wondering when you were going to figure that out.”

“Maker’s breath!” He slammed the door open again and ran out. A few moments later, Athehris heard him shout. “Minako, no!”

And Minako sang back. “Minako, _yes_!”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is a thing that's happening.
> 
> Whenever I get into a new fandom, no matter how peripherally, at some point I end up thinking, "Now how can I make Sailor Moon fit into this universe?" Occasionally, I have good ideas (like Minako and Remus meeting up in London during her Sailor V days or an alliance between Asgard and the Silver Millennium). Usually, they are blatant wish fulfillment and should never see the light of day. And then there's this idea, of Minako being pulled into the world of Dragon Age and wreaking merry chaos everywhere she goes.
> 
> I'm not saying it's good or bad; I'm just saying I couldn't not write about it. I tried. It's impossible.
> 
> So here is the first of probably too many fics in which we examine what happens while Minako's in Thedas. Hopefully it will at least be mildly entertaining.


End file.
